No intention of providing the full range of services

As more states push bills to strip family planning funding from Planned Parenthoods, or relocate funding so that Planned Parenthood affiliates are last in line, other clinics that provide care to low-income and uninsured residents will be forced to shoulder the burden of reproductive health care services, especially when it comes to offering birth control.

Yet, as a case in Florida shows us, those clinics are now being drawn into the war on contraception thanks to “pro-life” medical specialists who are seeking positions within those networks with absolutely no intention of providing the full range of services the clinics were set up to offer. And sadly, refusing to hire these people won’t work as then you’d be facing a discrimination lawsuit.

I told you. I told you it was the camel’s nose under the tent, all this letting pharmacists refuse to do their jobs because “religious freedom.” I told you but YOU WOULDN’T LISTEN.

Sara Hellwege applied for a job at Tampa Family Health Centers (TFHC), but was turned down. According to lawyers representing Hellwege, by refusing her an interview after noting that she was a member of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) and learning that she would refuse to offer hormonal contraception, TFHC has discriminated against her on the basis of her religion.

Say what? She told them she would refuse to do part of the job, so they didn’t hire her – so that’s discrimination?

This is just batshit.

“Hellwege’s lawsuit accuses TFHC of religious discrimination, and violating both state and federal laws that protect medical professionals from being forced to participate in abortions,” reports Lifesite News. “She is seeking $400,000 in damages, plus a fine of at least $75,000 and forfeiture of all federal funding until the company aligns its employment policies with anti-discrimination laws.”

Those laws? Those godawful horrendous laws that protect medical professionals from being forced to participate in abortions? They need to go. Yesterday.

So, let’s see. You’d have to hire observant Muslims at the bacon processing plant. And then, since obviously the whole plant is problematic from that standpoint, you probably better switch over to producing halal tofu.

Given that hormonal contraception is not an abortifacient, she should be told her objection to providing it on the basis of her anti-abortion stance is absurd and her case should be dismissed. Of course, we’ve been handling false beliefs due to religion with kid gloves for so long that people who say the world is 6000 years old get something other than the derisive laughter they deserve.

All said, it seems strange how religious agencies are allowed to fire people for not toeing the party line, yet secular agencies somehow don’t get to do the same thing.

The face.
The palm.
The legend.
It is not discrimination to be denied a job doing something you refuse to do, nor is it reasonable to expect to get – and be paid for – a job you refuse to perform. If it was, I’d enlist in the army in a heartbeat – get paid to get fit and never have to harm another human being? That wouldn’t be bad at all. And it is a “religious” view, arguably, so maybe I could get away with it.

@John Morales, 6

PS Even presuming you intended “to not fire someone”, the reference was to a refusal to hire, not to a termination of hire.

@10 AMA- Well, didn’t SCOTUS just prove they’re willing to do whatever it takes to deprive women of reproductive health care? I wish I could think the courts will protect the fact that you need to be willing to do the job to be hired for it; I’m just not optimistic.

Christian Science EMTs who demand a religious right to use prayer rather than medicine. Jehovah’s Witness ER techs claiming a religious right to refuse blood transfusions while they are on shift. Scientologists going into psychology and insisting on a religious right to hand out rigged personality tests rather than engage in accepted good practices.

You have to do the job you were hired to do. You cannot cherry pick your tasks based on religious restrictions.

If that were allowed we’d eventually end up with a patchwork of services divided between umpteen dozen different health care centers.

Religion must be keep out of the work space and indeed the entire public space. We can’t allow people to organize their work routine around private superstitions. Doing so would be completely counter-productive.

Gaaaaah. That’s the sort of bullshit that makes me feel torn between starting over on another planet and wanting to stab fifty people at random. Well, semi-random; I’d probably start at this idiot’s church….

I told you. I told you it was the camel’s nose under the tent, all this letting pharmacists refuse to do their jobs because “religious freedom.” I told you but YOU WOULDN’T LISTEN.

Maybe my memory is faulty, but who wasn’t listening? I think all the non-listeners are either camels or camels-in-human-suits who are ecstatic about this development either publicly or when amongst friends.

It could also be that there are accommodationists/appeasers who are sincere and I am falsely inferring insincerity, I guess.

Interesting. My last job search, I was constantly running up against, “Well, you’re completely qualified to do the things 1 – 50 we want, but you don’t have *quite* enough experience in the 51st thing we want you to do, so even though you’re perfectly willing to learn it on your own time, NO JOB FOR YOU.” How does this lunatic waltz in with “Well, I refuse outright to do the job–how DARE you not hire me?”